You Don't Start A Fire Over Somebody Who'se Dead
by scuttlesworth
Summary: Post-Fall. 1. John writes himself back into the game. 2. John's been a busy boy; it's time for a break. Anthea has a proposal.
1. You Don't Start A Fire

It's not getting any better.

There was a sun. A brilliant, burning, flaring, violent exothermic nuclear reaction, that lit his life and burnt away the nightmares, that turned him from winter to summer. That singed his hair and gave him a burn and made everything visible. It was terrifying and glorious, to discover that he had fallen into orbit around such a sun. Not some safe little star, but a giant, a celestial mass of such volume and intensity that all other suns paled by comparison.

Then it all went wrong. Supernova, he thinks. And what is left behind is a black hole in the pit of his stomach.

All the light is gone out of the world. He does not know how he will cope. And time is not healing this.

* * *

John stands in the freezer section and tries to understand what his eyes are looking at. It takes effort. He's been standing there for several minutes, he thinks, and tries to shake himself out of the distraction. He reaches for the freezer door-handle to open it and grab something, some random brightly coloured package that might involve frozen vegetables which he absolutely loathes, and feels it tear open inside his guts like stitches. It howls and howls and draws everything into itself, all the careful little thoughts he's had skimming over his mind all week about needing to pull out money and needing to pay bills and needing. And he keeps moving, grabs a package and drops it in his basket without knowing what he's gotten and moves to the front of the store to pay because this is what you do. Like being a train on railroad tracks instead of a car on the motorway, he allows the requirements of his life to move him along.

If anyone speaks to him, he knows he smiles a little smile and replies and is generally as pleasant as he can manage being. He is polite, excruciatingly polite, and courtesy is a brilliant set of armor to keep everyone away. Some of them look worried despite his best of forts; those, he avoids.

* * *

He picked up the gun and held it the other day. Looked at it, really looked at it, and contemplated what it could do to a human body in exquisite clinical detail. Considered shooting the wall. Did not do so because it would be overly dramatic and excessively grieving and possibly get him sent away, and he does not want that. He eyes the thought warily and puts the gun down on the end table, where he can reach it. In case he needs it.

What he could possibly need it for is beyond him. The monster is dead and gone. Buried in an unmarked prison plot that Mycroft showed him one day, sympathy oozing from his every pore. But the weapon gives him - not comfort, no. The weapon is like a rock in his mind, a steady stable point.

* * *

Mycroft has the violin. Do you play, then, he asked without thinking, just to say something, and felt like such a fool after. Mycroft looked at him so kindly. No, he replied. Tone deaf. And he put it away in its case and John walked out.

* * *

He thinks the lines on his face have gotten deeper. He imagines that someday they will carve straight through his skull, and the pieces of his head will fall apart like a puzzle leaving his body just sitting there.

* * *

He thinks perhaps he has gone a little mad.

There was the emotional paralysis leading up to and after the funeral. There was the denial and the confusion. The fact that he couldn't go near the flat. The bedsit he ended up in.

Mycroft.

Mycroft brought him the papers. Said to keep them safe. Said they were important. Had his minions haul them in, boxes and boxes of them smelling like the flat, like acids and oils and wet newspaper. Mycroft could have stored them in a storage locker somewhere, John thinks, looking at them cluttering up his room. Mycroft who does look fatter now than before. More tired. Less pristine.

He waits until everyone is gone to open one, and to his surprise, he does not cry. Instead, he feels as though some terrible ending has been postponed, some doom temporarily stayed. As though he is balancing on a very fine wire, gliding on the merest thread of a breeze. It's not hope, then; but it is something. Some suspension of his fears.

* * *

Lestrade comes by. John has mostly forgiven him for not being enough to protect Sherlock from the monster. He's just a DI, after all. Barely even that after the press got ahold of him.

Lestrade brings the old case files John asked for. The ones that fill in the gaps on the stories.

* * *

He begins to write again.

He writes blog entries. Nothing personal. Nothing with himself in it. He spent months pulling notes and research papers together with his own recollections of little things Sherlock said. He sorted and filed and stacked and collated. And now he's got them, and all set and ordered neatly in a way that would absolutely _appall_ Sherlock, so he starts writing. Because he cannot bear to hear the crap people are saying, because the record is wrong, because more than believing he knows deep in his bones that the things in the press are lies like wounds on the truth. He is a doctor. He can _stitch_ this. So he uses words, and once he starts typing he does not stop. He types for days, barely getting up. It feels like fighting.

Sometimes he gets tired. Sometimes he crashes on the end, barely remembering to pull the blanket over himself. He remembers to shower and eat, mostly. But mostly he reads, and he writes.

It's an obsession, and he knows he's become a bit of the mental case locked in his room. But it feels so good, to have Sherlock there solving things in front of his eyes. To write up the notes and turn them into stories. To put them out there into the world, over and over, one story after another. Even when the comments come flooding in and are horrible, hateful, loathing, death threats. He starts keeping the gun closer, now, with some of the things people say. He gets twitchy going to the store. His shoulders hunch, his eyes flicker.

Nothing so pointless as fear can stop him on this, though.

He's got a mission.

* * *

Lestrade comes by a lot, after that. They spend time pouring over the files. Lestrade wants him to report the death threats to Donnovan. John looks flatly back at him. Greg is forgiven; Sally is not. Besides, he says, with a shrug as he goes limping back to the fridge for an apple and some cheese, it's not like the threats are a secret or anything. Sure, some of the worse ones come to his public e-mail, but a lot of them are comments on the blog. Open for anyone to see. If the police want to know about them they will. If they want to investigate they will.

So far, Lestrade is the only one who has come by with concerns, and he's not really a police anymore.

* * *

Someone throws paint all over the bedsit's front door. Red paint.

John moves out. The family who owns the building are apologetic but firm.

Lestrade helps him with the boxes.

* * *

There are dead rats pushed through the mail slot.

Mycroft sends a van and minions, and tries to arrange a more secure location.

John refuses. He won't live like that.

* * *

They burn down the rental.

Everything was scanned in anyways, a database secure enough to put the NSY to shame, locked by an RSA key Mycroft handed him casually some time ago. He didn't think anything of it then. Now…. Mycroft foresaw this, John thinks as he stands in front of the burning house, watching the firemen work to put it out. Petrol, they say, and John agrees; he smelled it while he was writing, grabbed what he needed and bolted. He's standing there on the street wearing his robe, barefoot, holding his laptop. The gun is dragging the pocket of the robe down on one side but no-one is about to comment on the state of his clothing. He has refused a shock blanket and refused to sit. His mind is working.

This wasn't the act of people passively angry about a con artist, he thinks. This was an act of war.

A car pulls up. The door opens and Anthea is in the back.

John feels something fierce and victorious inside.

There's a battle going on. He knows it. Somewhere out of sight something is happening, in the dark, beyond his senses.

He gets in the car.


	2. InterMission

He's coming to the end of it now. There were over a hundred files (one hundred and twenty two exactly) but it's been a year and a half and he's been diligent. Too diligent. There's only the one left.

So he takes a break. Says he deserves it. A week of Relaxing.

Mycroft doesn't argue. Says a bit of a pause now is a useful thing for the readers. Says he hopes the last case John writes up will be a good one, though, to reward those who will have to wait, who have been patiently following (and screaming about and ranting on and discussing) his blog for this whole journey.

John's throat won't work but he nods. The last case is indeed a good one.

When Mycroft leaves he goes and, for the first time, checks out the liquor cupboard in the living room. It turns out to be stocked with very nice Scotch; John looks around the spartan quarters and snickers. Trust Mycroft. Still, despite the alcohol, he doesn't get to sleep until very late that night.

When all of this is done, he tells himself, when the last case is written up, he'll be moving out. Mycroft has sheltered him long enough. Time to go again.

* * *

Morning comes later than normal, although he doesn't have a hangover. He yawns and stretches as he comes out of his room. Anthea, whose real first name he now knows is Claire or possibly Jeanette if she's not lying again which is doubtful, is already up. She's wrapped in a robe and curled up on one end of the sofa texting, exactly the same as she is every morning. He says hullo; she humms something absently in response without looking up or her fingers slowing. He no longer takes this personally; it's how she responds to everyone but Mycroft. He's still not sure whether they're sleeping together or not. Mycroft could be as sexless as a Ken doll under his suit for all John knows. For all John cares to think about, either.

He detours near her on the way to the kitchen and grabs her empty cup. This earns him a faint wave of thanks, which is more than Sherlock ever did, honestly. It doesn't hurt nearly as much to think Sherlock's name anymore. He snags his own mug from the rack and sets it beside hers, then starts filling the kettle.

He carries both hot teas back out, deposits her cup on the table by her elbow and sits in the blocky chair opposite her. She texts one-handed while snagging the cup without looking at it. It's a neat trick.

For a while, he just looks at the room while he wakes up. Beige carpet, blocky tan sofa, blocky wooden end tables, blocky cabinet full of posh booze, an elderly television gathering dust in one corner. A window with dark green curtains last made in the 70's. A cheap bookcase with battered popular paperbacks and a couple scratched old dvd's. White walls. The rest of the house is just as ugly.

Somehow it's tremendously comforting nonetheless; might be to do with the foot-thick walls and the bomb-resistant glass on the window, though. Or the fact that he's been there for months now, long enough to get accustomed to the less than overstuffed cushions and the lumpy beds. Reminds him a bit fondly of barracks life.

Anthea is an oddity in the utilitarian decor; her robe is silk and elaborately patterned, her makeup clutters the one bathroom, her perfume lingers in the air long after her shower is done. It was awkward at first, but they've managed to muddle around each other. Well. John's done most of the muddling; she hasn't exactly made any concessions. Not that he needs many. He's living just as lightly here as he has everywhere else for the past couple years. His only decoration is still the skull, which is sadly worn; it didn't survive the fire well. John's made such repairs as he can, but it's not in perfect nic.

He doesn't even know he's going to ask her a question until it's out of his mouth. "How did you meet Mycroft, then?"

Her fingers keep texting, but her eyebrows come up and the rest of her face follows until she's actually looking at him. A little smile plays over her lips for a moment, then she ... Actually lowers her phone. John just gapes.

"He rescued me from the steno pool," she replies.

"Steno pool," John repeats stupidly. Shakes his head. "Sorry, that's just..."

Her lips twitch and, just like that, a little light goes on in his head. "Oh," he says, and pinches his lips together so he won't laugh at his own ignorance. "Not that sort of steno pool, then." He takes a sip of his tea. Thinks. She's watching him. After a moment, he caves into his curiosity. "What sort of steno pool was it?"

A smirk drifts across her features. "One that speaks forty-seven languages," she replies.

"Forty-seven!" marvels John. Shakes his head. "So he rescued you from this life of boredom to what, type for him? Be Mycroft in training, replace him when he retires?"

She's looking back at the cell in her hands. Her answer is almost absent. "Oh no. I could never replace him; no-one could. We've got a couple programs going to clone him and virtualize his brain. No, I'm going to be Prime Minister in about 30 years." Her gaze drifts up, and she eyes him consideringly. "Going to get married next year. Can't get the popular vote without a decent husband. Gloria - she's still in the steno pool - has been sorting through potential candidates all month. Shouldn't be long now before we pick someone."

John gapes. Her gaze turns thoughtful, and she lifts one hand to curl a finger near her lips. Looks him dead in the eye. "Although..."

John swallows. Hs throat clicks. Anthea-Claire-Jeanette leans forward. Her robe gapes just a bit at the hollow of her throat. John, quite manfully, keeps his gaze on her face. She's smiling. "Decent, hard-working, famous writer, war veteran, older, respectable, doctor, kind face..."

The tips of John's ears are burning like fire. "No, nonono," he chokes out. "Oh no. None for me thank you very much." Sees the look on her face. "Oh god. Not that you're not attractive, you're beautiful, it's just. Ah..." He tumbles to a halt as he sees her expression. She giggles. He relaxes. "Ah." Sips his tea. "Funny."

She leans back, her eyes sliding back down to the cell phone. Fingers flying. Her lips are still quirked.

He can barely hear her as she murmurs, "Pity.


End file.
